Dough – Substitute for pastry flour

This is the last write-up on the topic, and it's much simpler:

For hand-pulled noodles, you need:
Bread flour (wet gluten 29-30%, protein 11%-12%)
45% added water
1% alkaline solution
kansui powder or (Lye Water + Baking powder) or Peng or Baking Soda

Ingredients (Alkaline solutions)
kansui powder
55% sodium carbonate (Na2CO3),
35% potassium carbonate (K2CO3),
10% sodium biphosphate dodecahydrate (NaHPO3.12H2O)

Lye Water
potassium carbonate (K2CO3) 74.5% in 100ml
sodium biphosphate (NaHPO3) 3.4% in 100ml

Instant ash Peng
sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) 90%
Sodium chloride (NaCl) 1.15%

It is recommended to use bread flour because of its higher wet gluten content compared to normal white flour. You will also need a small amount of alkali. One recommendation is to use kansui powder, due to its ph of 11. If kansui isn't available, the next option would be baking powder and lye water. If either isn't available, the next option would be to use sodium carbonate 1% of total weight flour weight (e.g. if you use 100g of flour, use 1g of sodium carbonate). If you're using a lower gluten dough like all-purpose flour, then baking powder will do just fine. If you're using cake flour, use baking soda.

(Remember to add the kansui/baking soda/baking powder/sodium carbonate to the flour and mix it in before adding water.)

Sodium carbonate vs. potassium carbonate:
I've haven't had success with bread flour, plain flour or all-purpose flour with potassium carbonate. Even though it increases the ph of the dough, it still does not give the dough its stretchability.

Why use alkaline solution in the first place?! Alkaline solution will increase the water absorption and gluten creation of the dough to enable it to be pulled sooner than normal by leaving the dough to rest at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes. The downside of the alkaline solution is that it also breaks down gluten after the peak absorption is achieved. So on one side you have faster absorption but on the other side the dough will become more resilient to pulling if left too long.

For a non-alkaline solution, use this tutorial. It will cover all the basics that you will need to learn, and you WILL need to use all-purpose flour or plain flour. Noodle flour works best.

In conclusion:
Without sodium carbonate it's possible to have hand-pulled noodles with any flour. The downside is you will have to knead the dough for 45 minutes and leave to rest for 2 hours until you can start pulling your noodle strands.

Without sodium carbonate the noodles are harder to pull and I had most success with cutting each strand and going from there from the video.

With great skill, a true artist could do what you describe with Thai/Vietnamese rice paper, the dinner plate sized, extra thin ones, like for Fresh Spring Rolls.

I will never apply for the job, I promise.